


dark curtains through which no light enters

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Batgirl (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Blindness, Cassandra Cain-centric, F/F, Hurt Cassandra Cain, Kind of Character Study??, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No Beta We Die Like Stephanie Brown, POV Cassandra Cain, Past Child Abuse, Permanent Injury, Pre-Femslash, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: "Cassandra,” Bruce says, something terrible and heavy in his tone. She cocks her head at him, twisting to face him, blinks the thick slog of unconsciousness from her heavy eyes, and then—It dawns on her. Or maybe that’s not the correct way to phrase it. It darkens her, a world of solid vantablack curtains shielding her from her greatest asset: her sight.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	dark curtains through which no light enters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reika (Ariabunny)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariabunny/gifts).



She doesn’t understand at first.

Her nose is thick and burning with the scent of hospital – cleaners, death, illness barely contained, linen sheets – her hands are tightly wound in the crinkly fabric of her hospital gown. Her lips are cracked, mouth tasting like cotton, and she is ultimately uncomfortable.

She shifts on the small bed, hearing the small _beep beep beep_ of her heart, and blinks. Once, twice—

“Cassandra,” Bruce says, something terrible and heavy in his tone. She cocks her head at him, twisting to face him, blinks the thick slog of unconsciousness from her heavy eyes, and then—

It dawns on her. Or maybe that’s not the correct way to phrase it. It _darkens_ her, a world of solid vantablack curtains shielding her from her greatest asset: her sight.

“How?” she croaks, throat sore from the abusive vibration, unpracticed for who knows how long.

Bruce squeezes her shoulder, and she doesn’t need to be able to _see_ him to know he’s frowning. He’s riddled with tension, arm stiff. She wonders, for a beat, if he’s in tears.

She wonders if she is.

“Your mask was off,” he murmurs, “and there was—”

Acid. She remembers a flood of acid, remembers pulling her full-face mask off to comfort a girl. A child. One with her sad eyes and her short hair and scars from abuse like hers.

“Permanent?” she asks tonelessly, thinking of that little girl running before Cass had seen what she’d been running from.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

For all she’s studied the English language since being taken in by Bruce, no words contained in any page of old literature adequately describes how she feels in that moment. No word can be offered as an adequate response.

Bruce inhales, shaky and afraid and still squeezing her shoulder. He’s human, right now. She’d known it on some level, but it’s horrible in this tiny sterile room. It’s horrible, broken apart by the _beep beep beep_ of her heart. He’s human, and she’s human too.

“Oh,” she says again, feeling and not seeing the sting of tears in her sightless eyes.

She thinks he cries too.

* * *

She moves in with Steph, because that’s what people who can’t—because that’s what people who have struggles do. They move in with friends, or they move in with family, but Cass can’t handle Bruce’s anguish on top of her own. She can feel it, even if she can’t _read_ it. And she can’t see how to soothe it. She can’t fix it. It’s ugly and horrible and she needs to be away from it.

It’s worse than learning to speak, because being mute had nothing to do with _loss_. Recovering from it had been about gain, about healing, and there’s no real way to _heal_ from this. There is no _gain_.

She dances, in the space Stephanie clears in the living room. She plays old compositions and feels the notes resound in her as they always have, lets them move her and compel her as they always have, but with a new undercurrent of sorrow.

She trips, occasionally. Trips over pillows and books and furniture. She stumbles on doorframes and clothing. She is not graceful. She is not perfect. She cannot see, and she cannot read them.

 _Good job!_ Steph will praise, pulling her into surprise hugs and clapping for her. Cass has to press her fingers to her best friend’s lips to feel the expression, to _read_ it, and it still registers as lesser. As different than before.

Because she’s lost her sight, and with it, her first language.

* * *

She’s told not to patrol. She tries anyway.

Cass tries to listen. To hear where she once would see. To guess where she would once know. She almost gets stabbed. A bullet grazes her skin. She takes more hits than she ever has before as she tries to get a sense of her space, of his style, without the tells and betrayals in every micro gesture she’d once read like a book.

 _It’s too dangerous_ , Bruce says with his awful horrible cold painful _guilt_ pressing over her like a sweet-smelling cloth. She’s furious, angry, at herself and at him and at acid and everything in between,

 _It always was_ , she signs, foot tapping painfully loud in the quiet apartment, Steph still at her side. Her ribs ache, her face is black and blue (so she’s been told).

 _But now you can’t see that_ , he replies.

Cass kicks him out.

* * *

She tries to patrol again.

She falls.

Steph catches her.

Steph yells at her, lip trembling beneath Cass’s fingers, seeing eyes leaking tears Cass feels on her hand.

 _Please_ , her best friend says. _Please_.

Cass doesn’t try again.

* * *

She dances. She talks. She eats. She sleeps.

She doesn’t see. She doesn’t know. She has to touch, and she doesn’t always want to touch, so she has to listen. Cass has never particularly liked listening, not when she can discern almost anything she wants to know from sight alone.

She hears Steph. Hears her walk and talk and move and think aloud. But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand, not like she once had.

 _It will get better_ , Steph says.

It doesn’t get better.

* * *

Steph dies while Cass sits in her apartment, while Cass hears the sounds of chaos and smells the sulfur and copper in the air, while Cass tries to see but can’t.

Steph dies while Cass doesn’t see, alone and in pain and in a suit that isn’t hers.

Steph dies. Cass doesn’t see her funeral.

* * *

Cass patrols. Cass falls. Cass gets stabbed. Cass gets stitched up.

She doesn’t see. She isn’t that good at hearing. But she learns the rooftops blind, learns to count her paces and know things she hadn’t before.

Because she has to help herself now. Steph can’t anymore. Steph is dead.

* * *

She hears, and tastes, and smells.

Cass does not see.

“Cass?”

But she does hear, and she hears her best friend enough to know things will be okay.


End file.
